Fairy-stories are not just for children, as anyone who has read Tolkien will know. In his essay On Fairy-StoriesTolkien discusses the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy and rescues the genre from those who would relegate it to juvenilia. This is aptly and elegantly illustrated in the haunting short story, Leaf by Niggle, which recounts the story of the artist, Niggle, who has 'a long journey' to make and is seen as an allegory of Tolkien's life. Written in the same period when The Lord of the Rings was beginning to take shape, these two works show Tolkien's mastery and understanding of the the art of sub-creation, the power to give fantasy 'the inner consistency of reality'.

This edition also contains a Preface by Christopher Tolkien; the poem Mythopoeia in which the author Philomythus, 'Lover of Myth', confounds the opinion of Misomythus, 'Hater of Myth'; and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Professor Tolkien's dramatic poem which takes up the story following the disastrous Battle of Maldon in 991, where the English Commander Beorhtnoth was killed.